November 10, 2006

If James Carville, et al., are serious about this, the Democratic Party rank-and-file had better make their voices heard. We just picked up at least thirty seats in the House, our best effort in decades, and took a majority for the first time in a dozen years, in large part because Howard Dean pursued a strategy of challenging the Republicans in every district, taking the fight to all fifty states. Many of the incoming freshman class will represent districts that are heavily Republican in voter registration, the types of seats that the party establishment would aver that they were beyond any hope of capture, and it's because of the 50-state Strategy.

Many of the longshots didn't pan out, of course, but there are a lot of Republican and conservative voters in Wyoming, lets say, or in Idaho-1, that voted for a Democrat for the first time, a pivitol step towards any realignment. Reaching beyond the base means the party might see a day when no region of the country can be written off, which is the true mark of a majority party. And it shows respect and reverence for others, that we don't view our fellow citizens as "Red Staters," but as members of a governing coalition, as potential constituents, and most importantly, as fellow Americans. Dean and his allies in the blogosphere forced the GOP to defend areas that it had perceived as being untouchable, but were in fact soft, and the result was a victory of national proportions.